Rosalind Franklin

Rosalind Franklin (25 July 1920-16 April 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who discovered the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite.

Biography
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was born in London, England in 1920, and she came from a prominent British Jewish family. She graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1941, and she worked for the University of Cambridge laboratory. She earned her PhD and went to Paris in 1947, and she went on to work with the New Zealander scientist Maurice Wilkins. She made X-ray diffraction images of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite, and her 51st picture of DNA led to James D. Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. She died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37, and her co-contributors Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were co-recipients of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the DNA double helix; the Nobel Prize was not yet awarded posthumously, and her contributions would not be recognized until after her death.